Are our HD bits being shaved?

Steve Martin · Post by **Steve Martin** » Tue Sep 14, 2004 6:54 pm

Here are some images that compare frames from a couple of movies before and after DirecTV shaved the bitrates of Showtime HD and HDNet Movies...

http://www.widemovies.com/directvcomp.html

Grumpy_Bob · Post by **Grumpy_Bob** » Wed Sep 15, 2004 3:49 pm

Steve:

Wow. I appreciate your efforts. That must have taken some time to match the exact frames.

But that is a depressing discovery, to see so much detail robbed from the original source material. Especially since this is a "premium" channel for which people are paying extra for what is supposed to be the best possible quality. Wow, again. What a difference.

chuckken · Post by **chuckken** » Wed Sep 15, 2004 4:27 pm

Lets try to be positive and appreciate what we do have...I've got a feeling that when Directv gets their new birds in the firmament, we'll get our bitrates back...........Jack....

donshan · Post by **donshan** » Wed Sep 15, 2004 6:32 pm

chuckken wrote:Lets try to be positive and appreciate what we do have...I've got a feeling that when Directv gets their new birds in the firmament, we'll get our bitrates back...........Jack....

DirecTV is going for 1650 total HD channels. Even with 4 birds that is a lot of bits- the temptation will be to shave bits somewhere.

chuckken · Post by **chuckken** » Wed Sep 15, 2004 7:07 pm

donshan wrote:
DirecTV is going for 1650 total HD channels. Even with 4 birds that is a lot of bits- the temptation will be to shave bits somewhere.

I'm of the glass half full variety...and I'm thinking by then Directv will come to full understanding at just how adamant we videophiles are at expecting a crisp perfect picture for our $$$'s...

donshan · Post by **donshan** » Thu Sep 16, 2004 9:35 am

chuckken wrote: I'm of the glass half full variety...

Thanks for that, I need cheering up. I have had too many disappointments getting HD.

I see Arianespace got the contract to launch the first Spaceway in April 2005. We should have a test case a few months later. That is if the French don't screw it up!!. Boeing launched the last DirecTV 7S. More "outsourcing"?

akirby · Post by **akirby** » Thu Sep 16, 2004 10:13 am

I thought DirecTV had more than just 4 sats. I thought it was 6 or 7?

TIPS List · Post by **TIPS List** » Thu Sep 16, 2004 7:42 pm

----- HDTV Magazine Tips List -----

How on earth do you determine the "file size". When I record to my HD-DVR it does not tell me how
much space it is taking up on the hard drive. Same for recording to D-VHS from OTA programming.

Hugh

TIPS List · Post by **TIPS List** » Thu Sep 16, 2004 7:42 pm

----- HDTV Magazine Tips List -----

To learn how to modify an HD TiVo to get that kind of information, see
www.dealdatabase.com forums.

If you record to DVHS, you can dump from DVHS to a PC hard drive with
Firewire, and use tools to analyze the transport stream. It can give
you the total size of the video and audio streams which you can add up
and divide by the time to compute the audio/video bitrate.

(If it was easy, everyone would do it

Steve Martin

TIPS List · Post by **TIPS List** » Thu Sep 16, 2004 7:44 pm

----- HDTV Magazine Tips List -----

There have been some interesting discussions on AVS Forum about the
quality of the Fox broadcasts today (I thought the Cowboys game was
particularly lacking both in terms of the HD quality and the outcome

I measured the bitrate of the Fox broadcast and it was only 11.3mb/s.
I've been told that is because they distribute it at a low bitrate to
allow for affiliates that multicast. Their transmission method, with
the use of "splicers", allows the affiliates to pass the feed on
without recompressing it. But, if they have to distribute it at a
"lowest common denominator" bit rate, that hurts us all. Our local
affiliate does not multicast, so 7mb/s of bandwidth was just wasted in
our market.

The ESPN-HD broadcast on DirecTV tonight is at close to 17mb/s and
looks much better.

--
Steve Martin

HDTV Forum

Are our HD bits being shaved?

Images